Development and Validation of a Scale to Measure Academic Resilience of Students

Abstract

Academic resilience can lead to better behavior and results for disadvantaged learners since they can achieve good educational outcomes despite diversity. Several studies mentioned that various protective factors could affect resilience among students. On the other hand, several risk factors also directly affect its development among learners. This research focuses on the critical role of academic resilience in fostering positive behavior and outcomes among disadvantaged learners, enabling them to achieve educational success despite diverse challenges. Drawing on existing literature and personal interviews with secondary school students in Bulacan, a scale was developed to assess academic resilience, incorporating both risk and protective factors identified by Kutlu and Yavuz (2016). The four-point Likert scale, administered to 591 students, demonstrated promising psychometric features upon validation. Exploratory factor analysis revealed two distinct internal and external protective factors comprising 37 items in the newly developed FLARS instrument. Rigorous criteria for factorability were met, including a Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy exceeding the recommended threshold at .915 and a statistically significant Bartlett's test of sphericity (X2(666) = 7351.246, p < .05). Furthermore, the overall Cronbach's alpha coefficient of .901 indicated exceptional reliability. Consequently, the FLARS instrument emerges as a reliable and valid tool for measuring academic resilience levels among secondary school students. While the study recommends readministering the instrument to a larger sample for enhanced reliability, validity, and generalizability, it marks a significant contribution to the understanding and assessment of academic resilience in educational contexts.